I have a strange situation. I have two Linksys WRT54G routers running DD-WRT. Both routers suddenly started acting strangely yesterday. Loss of signal, couldn't connect to the router, once connected, pinging the router took over a second or was dropped. Accessing the internet was ridiculously slow or non existent.

I tried only having one router on at a time. I tried not connecting the router to anything (a cable model for example). The problem continued. But, when I connected to the router via an ethernet cord, it worked perfectly. I did a 30-30-30 reset on the routers, but the problem still persists.

I changed the channel to auto to see if it was a conflicting router in the area to no avail. My neighbor's wireless router (which he gave us access to) works perfectly in my apartment. Occasionally the routers will work like normal again. But, suddenly, the connectivity issues start again.

Is it possible there is some sort of wireless (Ham, 4G, LTE, other routers, etc) that could be causing interference which would cause the router's wireless quality to suck?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I hope I don't have to trash these two routers as I love the whole Linksys + DD-WRT setup.

Another software tool to see which 802.11 channels are in use is inSIDDer: metageek.net/products/inssider Note that these tools will only report RF signals that can be recognized as valid WiFi signals. You would need an RF spectrum analyzer that would detect raw energy if the interference is actually from non-802.11 sources.
–
sawdustOct 31 '12 at 20:02

1 Answer
1

It is perfectly possible that some other device working on similar frequency is jamming your signal. It could be anything from microwave ovens to baby monitors used by someone in your family or by the neighbors and it is a pain to investigate.

In some cases the device causing the interference may be jamming the whole range of 2.4GHz networks so the best solution would be to move away to 5GHz or Ethernet cabling.

Source: had to investigate similar issue a couple years ago, solved by replacing the old microwave and replacing antennas on my devices.